{"id":3694,"date":"2014-02-12T06:43:14","date_gmt":"2014-02-12T11:43:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.jimhaku.com\/blog\/?p=3694"},"modified":"2014-02-12T06:42:25","modified_gmt":"2014-02-12T11:42:25","slug":"understanding-why-lettered-notation-is-illogical","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.jimhaku.com\/blog\/understanding-why-lettered-notation-is-illogical\/","title":{"rendered":"Understanding Why Lettered Notation is Illogical"},"content":{"rendered":"

Music is not Science. There’s some interesting sciencey things about music, but music itself doesn’t have to perfect or logical. Classical notation using letters is a great example. It hasn’t changed for hundreds of years altho the values and assignments are largely arbitrary. Here’s the notes on a keyboard:<\/p>\n

\"piano_notes\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Most pianos and keyboards will be tuned to A440 in equal temperament. Some have an issue with this but my beef is the assignment of the black and white keys, or really the concept of flats and sharps as they are assigned to the letters A-G.<\/p>\n

The argument against redesigning this system from scratch may be that music is more about intuition than logic and that the existing system has prevailed precisely because of this and anyway, it’s all pretty logical it you study it long enough. But this is the problem. It only seems right because you accept these arbitrary assignments as a kind of Truth that is unquestioned. Staring from this, a logical construct is formed around it that supports itself and eventually, seems intuitive. But really, the process involves rote memorization which is wholly unintuitive. For example, the notes A and B are a whole step apart, but B and C are a half step. Why? There is a historical reason, but also, the notes themselves must be considered as nonsense. The white keys on the piano may seem “brighter” sounding or more “natural” in some way but this is only through repetition, ear training, and relative placement of notes. An older standard of note values places the A above middle C at around 415 Hz, a full half-step below A440. If a keyboard is tuned to the values of the notes when those notes were invented, the keyboard looks like this: <\/p>\n

\"(it<\/a>

(it actually will look the same if you don’t paint the note values on there)<\/p><\/div>\n

Unless you have perfect pitch (trained to 440), you might not even notice a piano has been tuned this way. It might sound off at first, but you’d get used to it. Time has proven this. The system of equal temperament is another example, but regarding the intervals. We are accustomed to hearing notes and intervals slightly wrong from what they were first intended to the point were the “right” values now sound wrong. Eliminating the arbitrary system of letter values with sharps and flats would make learning notes and intervals easier for new students.<\/p>\n

%<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Music is not Science. There’s some interesting sciencey things about music, but music itself doesn’t have to perfect or logical. Classical notation using letters is a great example. It hasn’t changed for hundreds of years altho the values and assignments are largely arbitrary. Here’s the notes on a keyboard: Most pianos and keyboards will be […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"activitypub_content_warning":"","activitypub_content_visibility":"","activitypub_max_image_attachments":4,"activitypub_interaction_policy_quote":"anyone","activitypub_status":"","footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[599],"tags":[635,636,637],"class_list":["post-3694","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-a0","tag-music-theory","tag-notation","tag-temperament"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1m3oy-XA","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jimhaku.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3694","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jimhaku.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jimhaku.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jimhaku.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jimhaku.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3694"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.jimhaku.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3694\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3700,"href":"https:\/\/www.jimhaku.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3694\/revisions\/3700"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jimhaku.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3694"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jimhaku.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3694"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jimhaku.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3694"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}